I have aquired a old laptop my MIL roommate left behind when he was kicked out, I have been feably working on it and got nowhere, its a dell inspirion 3800 with win me loaded on it :( it has 64mb ram, 5 gig HD, other than that its fine for what I want it to do, but it won't connect to internet, it has a ethernet pc card in it, but it keeps trying to use the internal dial up modem, I have downloaded and burned the drive for the said pc card, but when I load the cd in the drive to install the laptop locks up, eject cd saptop works, I also tried to load a game from a burned disc and it wouldn't open the file, it was a "open with" window. I have reinstalled win me trying to fix or replace any lost files from previous foolings. It also has a external floppy disk drive or I can remove cd rom drive and use the floppy, would that be able to load the drivers I need, I don't think the usb port is wroking right either. I like this laptop easy to use adn decent, all I want it to do is connect internet via cable modem or ethernet cable so I can play online games and surf web on my couch. Is it worth putting new memory max is 512, a new bigger HD say around 10-20 gig load XP and run with it. For what I want I don't want to have to spend over 500 bucks for a laptop.

I would suggest that you not invest a penny more into this hole of a computer.

64 MB of RAM is, however, woeful.. but for ME? That came out in 2000 or so, so 64MB might be okay. My memory doesn't go back that far.

Try going into the device manager and disabling the dialup modem. Then make sure that the ethernet card is enabled (and has no problems). Reset all of its settings to default. It *SHOULD* acquire an address automatically.

Also, you might be having router issues. Try hooking up directly to your modem so you can rule out the router.

As far as the CD and game, it's a burned disc, so is that pirated software?? Can't help you there :)

Well the ethernet card isn't on a router, it goes straight into the cable modem, how would I disable the modem in device manager? I know where that is and have seen it, looked for a way to disable it but didn't see it. So is this laptop too old and not worth a upgrade, or is it just a bottom of line that was never meant to be upgraded? I have thought about checking pawn shops for one but could end up with something really bad.

dirt -- for a couple hundred bucks, you can get yourself into a much nicer laptop than this one. Might even be able to find one that'll run XP.

ME is just a disaster of an operating system.

When you open up the "network adapters" tab, what do you see?

How about the "modems" tab? Both should appear on the device manager.

dirt -- for a couple hundred bucks, you can get yourself into a much nicer laptop than this one. Might even be able to find one that'll run XP.

ME is just a disaster of an operating system.

When you open up the "network adapters" tab, what do you see?

How about the "modems" tab? Both should appear on the device manager.

Network adapters tab shows the ethernet pc card there, modems tab shows the installed internal dial up modem. I knew about Win Me being a huge pitfall, I had it on a gateway biggest POS I ever been around, I love xp better. If this ain't worth messing with, then I will use it to play games and keep any eye out for a better laptop, the pawn shops around norman have a good selection of them.

Okay.. now as to the modem, right click it and click "disable."

Go to the ethernet card, go to properties and just restore the default settings there.